Need To Make A 3d Butterfly Sparkle

[amelie-kianha-lachance]

I need to make a 3d (maya) butterfly sparkle. Like Tinkerbell in the Peter Pan movie(not the cartoon).
An actor will blow sparkles in the air and i want it to turn into a sparkly butterfly. Does anyone know what would be the best way to accomplish this. Many thanks!!!

[aaron-marine]

well i should have answered sooner, but i'd say use maya particle dynamics. when the particles fly they can probably just use a type of particle collision with an already animated butterfly. you would just have to make it so the geometry of the butterfly is not visible in the final render and you will most likely have to use the maya hardware renderer to have the particles show up.

this isnt really a topic that can be covered well in the shake forums, maybe a little bit of compositing into the scene along with making the particles have more of a final glow and twinkle to them. your best bet to get help on this is to go into the dynamics discussion for maya.

[amelie-kianha-lachance]

Thanks so much!

What i have done so far is filmed myself blowing the sparkles in front of a black screen. I'm not sure what i will do next with it. The easter holidays are comming and i will not have a class for another 2 weeks so my teacher (she's the one who told me to proceed like this since she is a Shake teacher and not a Maya teacher.) will tell me what to do with it. This prodject will be for her class so I need to make a special effect for my final grade. During this two week off I will make the butterfly with your recommendation and let you know how it turned out. I will also be writing my step by step of what i did in Maya in the New User forums of Maya. Seems to me ALOT of people are interested in this subject cause I keep seeing the numbers go up everytime I come back on the site. Cool to know my idea insen't so tacky.Everyone wish me luck...

[fxnurbs]

You can also use Illusion software to create quickly your sparkles, it will be easier for a newbe.
Shake is not build to do that, it is only a compositing soft

[amelie-kianha-lachance]

What is Illusion software and can i use it on a Mac? Tried Shake not so good. I have to admit I am in 3d animation and Shake sucks. It dosen"t do much. I heard after effects is better. Is that true? My stupid school is giving a shake class for the last year. The students coming in for september are going to learn after effect. Sooo Unfair

[fxnurbs]

Don't underestimate shake, it is a compositing software, and on that side it is really so much better than after effects. Shake is still used in film in most of the big companies even nuke is starting to replace the old shake. so if you prepare your skills for film, shake is still good.

If you talk about graphics animations yes after effects is way better, and there is many plugs on it for everything.

To answer your question about illusion, yes there is a mac version.
http://www.wondertouch.com/demos\_se\_osx.asp

you can also find these illusion in combustion

[aaron-marine]

i agree and yes i agree quite a bit with fxnurbs quite a bit lol. Shake is very powerful for being such a small piece of software and you can pull off some amazing composites such as putting the CG sparkle butterfly in with your live action footage.

the hard part is getting the sparkles to do what you want and most people in the shake forums will tell you to have some sort of other graphic or 3D animation appliction at your disposal and knowledge to pull off this kind of effect.

as for learning after effects, you dont need a class for that at all. over 100 free video tutorials from Andrew Kramer at VideoCopilot.net

[amelie-kianha-lachance]

Hi I'm back

I finally gave up my morphing sparkle into the shape of a butterfly idea. I had to change so much stuff. I filmed real sparkles that i blew off of my hand in front of a black screen . Did not look the way I wanted. So after even tring in Maya with particles (they can glow but not sparkle) everything was going to crap until I came up with a weird idea. I took me animated butterfly in shake, I found this animated backround of the trail of a magic wand all sparkly in LIVETYPE!!!
Go figure. I attach the trail of sparkles to the butterfly and keyframed my rotoshape to follow its movement and voila!

[fxnurbs]

The important is that you are happy

for sparkling in maya you just add an opacity per particle attribute and in run after dynamic script window you write

particleShape1.opacityPP=rand(0,1);

or -1,2 that push the effect. it randomly change the opacity of your particles

cheers

[aaron-marine]

if you ever want to try this effect, I have some free time coming up here pretty soon...we can find ways of making it work lol. im sure fxnurbs wouldnt mind getting in on some of this action haha.

[amelie-kianha-lachance]

Thanks boys!
Fxnurbs, i will certainly try this next week(working this weekend) I had to give my prodject already cause thy are showing it at the schools graduation next friday but i want to get to the bottom of it for my personnal knowledge. I know it's goin to be stuck in my head until I can get it perfect. So I will take whitecrow's offer and starting wensday I will be coming to this site now that i will have all the time in the world. I'll write my sparkles adventures for anyone who cares